In her new book, Sleeping With Your
Smartphone, Leslie Perlow explains how a
small group of high-powered consultants made
a concerted effort to disconnect from their
mobile devices for a few predetermined hours
every week—and how they became more
productive as a result. This excerpt from the
book introduces the idea the scheduled
disconnecting process, dubbed "predictable
time off," which helped these phone-addled
employees to take better control of both their
workdays and their lives.